Illinois needs to win silver, too

A Toyota worker uses a drill while assembling a vehicle at one of the company's plants.

We're hoping the city of Chicago and the state of Illinois pull out all the stops to land Amazon's second headquarters and the promise of as many as 50,000 jobs that would pay an average of $100,000 a year. The economic benefits of such a win are obvious: Every 10,000 jobs created by this new HQ would pump $1 billion a year into the local economy. The PR value is significant, too. If Amazon calls Chicago its second home, the city will, in one stroke, win the recognition it has deserved but rarely received as a bona fide tech hub. If Amazon comes, others surely follow.

But there's another big prize Illinois can and should compete for every bit as fiercely, Crain's Business Columnist Joe Cahill writes in a Sept. 27 post. Japanese automakers Toyota and Mazda are scouting locations for a $1.6 billion joint-venture factory that would employ thousands and put the winning state at the forefront of next-generation auto production.

Where Amazon would create jobs for white-collar talent in and around the headquarters, a Toyota-Mazda auto assembly plant would provide a livelihood for Illinoisans who want and need employment in skilled manufacturing—the kind of jobs that pay a decent middle-class wage and benefits. The state is among 11 competing for the Toyota-Mazda manufacturing hub. As Cahill points out, auto plants are the big game of economic development, and for good reason. They create more jobs, better-paid jobs and broader ripple effects than other business operations. And they don't come along very often. The Toyota-Mazda plant would be just the fourth new U.S. car factory in a decade. When fully operational, it would employ 4,000 people churning out 300,000 Toyota Corollas and Mazda crossover vehicles annually. Thousands more jobs would follow as suppliers set up shop nearby and local businesses profit from new money flowing into the area.

When providing economic incentives to lure big corporations, there's always the danger of giving away too much. We're still happy, for instance, that it was Wisconsin and not Illinois that chose to give Foxconn $3 billion to build an electronics factory in the Badger State. And when the state in 2011 gave Sears tax breaks worth an estimated $15 million a year for 10 years in order to keep the struggling retailer's headquarters in Hoffman Estates, we gave the deal a big thumbs-down.

But Amazon certainly isn't Sears, and Toyota-Mazda—which will employ everyone from welders to robotics experts to bean counters—isn't Foxconn, which has promised high-tech facilities around the world and failed to come through time and time again.

Naysayers will argue that Illinois' fiscal woes are too severe to afford an expensive push to snare Amazon and Toyota-Mazda. But Illinois can't fund its public pension plans, provide needed social services and support quality education, to name a few of the state's challenges, without growth. Though the immediate price might be high, we can't afford to let these opportunities for growth pass us by.